Roshin Yuukai
by Andromeda Star
Summary: Hatsune Miku is a detective investigating the probable suicide of Kagamine Rin. What Miku finds could possibly be the end of the government's biggest secret. Based on Rin's "Roshin Yuukai  MELTDOWN "
1. Receiving the Case

Author's Note: Hello, everyone! So, I blew another motherboard on my computer, which means right now I cannot access the final chapter of _Progression of Evil _to finish it. I'm not TRYING to keep you insuspense, I'm not, really...

So, instead, here is a short, three-, maybe four-chapter look at another pair of songs which is dear to my heart: both Rin's and Miku's rendtions of "Roshin Yuukai ~MELTDOWN~"

Story info? Sure!

**Title:** Roshin Yuukai  
**Setting:** The data world of Crypton, I suppose.  
**Main Characters:** Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin, "Little Rin," "Little Miku"  
**Plot Summary:** A virtually untraceable girl has gone missing and Hatsune Miku has been given the job of finding her. What should be a simple suicide case turns into something way more, however, as Miku follows Rin on the journey to uncover the omnipresent government's biggest secret, located in the core of a huge nuclear reactor.

* * *

**Chapter One  
****Receiving the Case**

_I met a girl one day, while walking to work. She seemed sad and distracted, which is probably why she ran straight into me. She didn't apologize, but simply stared at me; not contemptuously, like some people do after a collision when they expect the other person to apologize first, but as if there was nothing to say, as if there was an understanding between us and she was acknowledging it. _

_Then she said to me, "Where is your reactor?"_

_I didn't know what to make of this, but she didn't care, it seemed, or else she understood my stunned silence, for she nodded and continued walking in the opposite direction, turning her head toward the cloudy sky._

Two days later, that girl had vanished, presumed to be dead. I was assigned to her case. I was supposed to delve into her mind, discover the hidden thoughts that made her kill herself, or that made someone kill her. That she had managed to do something so secret as suicide in this age where your every move was tracked by the government and their database was something short of a miracle. That I was assigned to her case was nothing short of Fate.

I believed in Fate, even then, in that dismal place of little sunshine, little freedom, little joy. Every person who lived in our world had a Fate divined for them from Above. I believed it then. I believe it now.

The only difference is that now, I have proof.

These files are worth nothing if the reader is not willing to open his or her mind a little bit. These files contain only the truth as I see it. They contain only my observations, the facts I discovered, and my conclusions on the matter. My superiors wanted nothing to do with this strange case after I presented them with my findings. They wanted nothing to do with Fate or its workings.

So, be advised, reader, that this report, while under the aegis of Crypton Investigative Services, was not read or approved by any who hold any sort of position with this agency. I was promised that my report would be kept safe for the next person to discover, but nothing else. I was the only one to work on this very strange case of what seems like suicide, and therefore I take credit for anything written in these files, good, bad, ugly, or hard to accept.

My name is Hatsune Miku. I'm a minor detective with the government's information gathering sector, run completely and totally by the government-sanctioned company CIS. I don't hold a position of power at the time of this report, but I've heard my superiors considering raising my standing. I wonder sometimes if it's only to buy me off. They may promote me only under the condition that I keep my mouth shut.

Well, if I'm to keep quiet about my findings, then I'll be totally frank in this report, for it may be the only written truth out there.

When I was handed that assignment, two days after seeing the blonde girl on the street, I was still brooding over her strange words. Then the file landed on my desk and my immediate superior informed me that file was my next assignment, the case of a girl who had disappeared. I browsed the file, but as soon as I opened it my mind froze.

There was the girl I had met, right there on the page before me, her picture clear and sharp. Her blonde hair was held back from her face by a combination of a white headband and a collection of bobby pins.

"Her name is Kagamine Rin," my superior said indifferently. "Been missing for two days. Never showed up for work, that's how they found out. Apartment's empty. See what you can find out. Looks like she took her stuff and ran, maybe a suicide case. From what her coworkers say, she kept to herself, kinda an oddball."

"How did she manage to get rid of the Tracker?"

"That's just it. She didn't have one. She was almost impossible to trace. She worked, but she'd change jobs if anyone tried to get too friendly. When she was asked to get a Tracker planted, she'd disappear under the radar for a few months, and then show up in a different sector, almost a different person."

"I thought all babies are planted with Trackers now?"

My superior nodded. "If they're born in a hospital. She seems to just have cropped up out of nowhere, so that tells me her mother might have been too ill to get herself to a hospital, and therefore Kagamine never got herself a Tracker."

"Who was her mother?"

"Some poor gypsy woman who lived in one of the worse-off sectors. She had a Tracker, but she was, by nature of her living conditions, usually in her house, getting over some bug or another."

I nodded. "I'll take it."

That's how I ended up investigating the probable suicide of Kagamine Rin. A simple disappearance case. Figure out where and how she committed the dreadful act, and that was it. Case closed.

How wrong I was.

I started at her apartment, which lay in a hidden, thoroughly middle-class corner of the sector where she also worked. My superior had told me all I wanted to know about her workplace and what the others thought. I would get no more information by interviewing them, and so I set out to dig deeper under the surface. I had to figure out what was going through her head.

Her apartment was small, which was fitting; one woman on her own probably couldn't afford too much more than this. That was another thing: as far as I could tell, Rin had never had a male counterpart. She was always alone. I doubted that her mother survived too long past her birth; could the girl have been alone all of her life?

My information had been correct; her apartment was bare. It had three rooms: a combined kitchen/dining area, a combined bedroom/study, and a tiny bathroom. There was a bed, a set of bookshelves, a dresser, and a desk set in the bedroom, kitchen appliances and a table and chairs in the kitchen, and a toilet, sink, and small shower in the bathroom.

Nothing else, no frivolous furnishings, not even so much as a wall hanging. The bookshelves were packed to bursting, though; I could actually see the cracks in the middle where the thing was threatening to collapse. It was here I started, browsing the titles of her books.

Nothing out of the ordinary. There was something from every genre here. Rin liked to read, it seemed. Just to have something to look at, I pulled out the most worn book of her collection, and it turned out to be a strange one. Titled "Roshin Yuukai ~Meltdown~," the book seemed to be nothing but a collection of notes, possibly written by Rin herself. I read the first page, trying to figure out what the book was about.

_Fate – does it exist?  
Nuclear Reactor...government secret? What's really there?  
Nothing governing the government. Why are we oppressed?  
Wall. Outside of it?  
Found an old recorder. Why does nothing else survive? No old holos, No ancient relics. Only present?  
I have strange dreams sometimes, and I sleepwalk. Took to locking my doors to stop me from getting outside my room. Why does this happen? The dreams unsettle me._

It seemed to be a combination of journal and notepad, but undated and unorganized. None of it made sense. But I had a place to start. This "old recorder" Rin mentioned...it had to be somewhere in the room. She would have tried to work it, tried to connect it to the past. There were enough history books on the shelf to tell me she was a history nut, intent on preserving ancient junk.

I found it abandoned in a drawer of the desk, just a little machine, really. It had two buttons: "record" and "play." I assumed it created a data file after the fact. I hooked the thing into my headphone and hit the "play" button.

What followed was a sound I cannot possibly describe in words; and unfortunately the recording is destroyed, and so I cannot ask you to listen for yourself. It was Rin's voice. It was _her_ voice, completely and totally. It was her _voice_. It was _her voice_. It sounded as if she had just materialized beside me just to sing, to sing this song of lament, the only real clue to her whereabouts, to her mind.

I admit, I was struck dumb for several long minutes. _Her voice._ Singing _to_ me.

I don't say this in the sense that I was surprised that she was able to record her voice; in our world we had always been able to do that, since the dawn of time. I try now to convey to you the realness, the warmth of her singing voice. Even the most natural singers sound slightly different when switching between the singing and the spoken tone. Not Rin. It was clear, sweet, and sounded as if her spoken words had simply taken flight and gathered a melody about them. Yet there was a sadness about them, as if she'd been concealing tears.

Her voice struck you straight through to the deepest reaches of your soul. She sung not to the recorder, but to _me_. To the next person to listen. She sung straight _to me._

As to the matter of the lyrics, well, I had to listen to the recording several times just to get myself to actually focus on the lyrics and not on Rin's voice. Once I had, the subject matter was so unsettling, and the phrases so strange, that I had little doubt this was the clue I had been waiting for.

_The town is filled with brilliant light  
The chill of anesthetic ether  
It's 2 AM and I can't sleep  
Everything is changing so fast_

_The lighter's out of oil  
The pit of my stomach's on fire  
If everything is such a lie  
Then it really would be better_

_I dreamed of wrapping my hands around your neck  
on an early afternoon overflowing with light  
I dreamed, with eyes full of tears,  
of cinching your narrow throat_

_I want to dive into a nuclear reactor  
surrounded by beautiful blue light  
If I dive into the nuclear reactor  
then I can let it all go._

The nuclear reactor. Our world only had one, and it was immense, a big honking secret kept by the government. Many had attempted to delve into the reactor's secrets, and those had disappeared. Could it possibly be that Rin, the only person around without a Tracker, had actually discovered something? I scanned her notes again.

_If Fate exists, then it lies in the reactor. The dreams get stronger every month, more vivid. I wake often in a cold sweat, shaking with fear. I have to find a way to end this.  
Went near the reactor site today, as near as I could get. Security is so uptight. If I'm to properly explore it, it has to be by night, and I have to plan it for the exact moment the tracking equipment changes to night-mode. Window of about three minutes to get inside. Once in, they won't find me._

So she had gone to the reactor. Or at least, she had planned to go to the reactor. She wanted to research it. She certainly had researched a solid plan to get herself into the site. But what did Rin mean by "once in, they won't find me?" Surely there was security inside the reactor as well?

When I say "inside the reactor" I mean _inside_ the reactor. It's common knowledge that the nuclear reactor is not functional, and that we do not rely on nuclear power; that's why so many are keen on figuring out _what_ goes on at the reactor site.

Was whatever went on at the reactor so secret even the _government_ didn't know what was going on? This came as a huge shocker to me, the government employee. The government knows everything that goes on, and that's why every person has a permanent Tracker implanted in their skin at birth.

But Rin didn't have a Tracker. She would be the perfect person to investigate the reactor site, because she was virtually untraceable. _If Fate exists, it lies in the reactor._

Rin had jumped into the reactor, and she was correct; they couldn't find her in there.

But the nature of my case commanded me to find her.

I listened to the rest of the recording.

_On the other side of the balcony  
The sound of someone climbing the stairs  
The clouding sky falls into the room  
Through the window panes_

_In the scattering twilight  
the sun is red like teary eyes  
Bit by bit, as if dissolving  
little by little this world dying_

_I dreamed of wrapping my hands around your neck  
'neath curtains rustled by a breeze  
The words overflow from your  
dried-up lips, like bubbles_

_I want to dive into a nuclear reactor  
so the memories melt away to white  
If I dive into the nuclear reactor  
then I'll be able to sleep as I did long ago_

The cryptic sentences held clues, clues to what Rin had discovered, more than her scattered, unorganized notes. Still, the notes were important, too. I had pockets in my uniform, and the recorder went into one of those, the little worn book into the other. I had nothing else to go on, and so it was time to head to the reactor site.


	2. Entering the Reactor

Author's Note: Hello! Here's the next chapter!

I'd like to take a moment to note that the lyrics I use are from the translation available on animelyrics[dot]com. This is just to get the law off my back. They are not my lyrics, nor have I altered them in any way.  
The questions and other miscellaneous italicized lines are mostly from the official PV of Miku's "Roshin Yuukai ~MELTDOWN~" These I have altered slightly, just to make them understandable, because the Engrish was pretty bad.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank **japaneserockergirl**, **BokuWaFangFang**, **hidarichan81**, and **sophisticated as hell** (who sent me a PM) for this story's first reviews. Reviewers keep a writer writing!

And now, you may commence with the enjoyment of this chapter.

* * *

**Chapter Two  
Entering the Reactor**

The reactor site lay on the opposite side of town, easily twenty miles from Rin's apartment. This also provided a testament to how remarkably invisible Rin was; the government would certainly have taken notice of her being so far from anywhere she usually was. After all, she wasn't a nuclear reactor guard, or a scientist, or anything that would possibly require her to be anywhere near the reactor. From my information, she was at a desk job of some sort. A secretary, or a programmer.

But the distance at least helped explain something, and that was Rin's fascination with it. The reactor, rumored to be the government's most heavily guarded secret, would have held a certain wonder for Rin, who probably never moved out of the sector where she worked at the time. And her notes on Fate...it might have been a symbol of escape, of freedom.

I stopped dead on the sidewalk as the thought struck me, causing a few people to almost run me over. Had Rin actually jumped into the reactor, into whatever secrets were to be had there? Had she dived for the core, not caring what lay at the bottom?

The thought was monstrous and yet strangely interesting.

I had been planning to head to the reactor site, if only to discover what Rin's notes meant. But was there the possibility that Rin herself was inside the reactor?

My step quickened and my mind sharpened at that instant. Rin had to be inside the reactor. How else could she have so neatly disappeared? Even without a Tracker, the girl had a routine that was noted and accepted. And, come to think of it, I was probably the last person to have spoken to her, and we had crossed paths...in the government sector of the city, quite close to the reactor site.

Now that I had something more to go on than a song and jumbled notes, I frantically tried to recall details while I walked to the nearest monorail station. Rin had been wearing loose black pants, a white top, and a black coat to block the chill. Her hands had been in her pockets.

_Where was she going?  
What did she feel?  
What articles were necessary?  
What was in her pocket?_

The questions came unbidden to my curious mind, and with a little logic, I could answer them at least halfway satisfactorily. Rin was heading to the reactor site, possibly to sneak in and find out what lay there. She may have been feeling troubled; her notes mentioned frightening dreams. If she truly believed that Fate lay in the core of the reactor, then nothing was necessary for her journey, just the clothing she wore. But in her pocket...it might have been something dear to her, something she couldn't bear to leave behind, something that reminded her of her loved ones, if she had any.

The idea came to me in an instant, and I stumbled as I boarded the monorail. _Her fragment_.

I'm pretty sure that the people who are most likely to read this know already what a fragment is, but if, by chance, a relative of Rin's comes looking for the truth, or if these files get uncovered generations later by children who know not what it is, I'll explain. In the generation preceding mine, there was a terrible depression. I don't mean the economy, though that was bad, too. I mean a worldwide feeling of depression shared by every person living under Crypton's government.

Those were the years of deletion.

All over, friends and family members might one day disappear, their existence erased from the world. At first, people thought their friends were being kidnapped, and so immediately they scanned the Database for their friends' Trackers, only to find that the missing person had been erased, deleted from technological memory.

Well, naturally, there was a worldwide panic. No one knew who might be the next to be "deleted," and so the idea of a Fragment came along. The theory was that one could leave a lasting imprint of themselves on the world, something that would tell one's life story for others to remember. The fragment could be anything, though most people chose data crystals as being the most beautiful as well as the most sturdy objects around. These fragments could record a person's daily actions, as well as their thoughts, which of course make up so much of an individual's day it isn't funny.

The device could be replayed an infinite number of times, and so it was also a good tool for people with memory problems. But for Rin, a poor girl trying to prove that something truly existed in the reactor, I had a shrewd suspicion she took it to both look upon her mother or anyone she'd been close to and also to record whatever happened in the reactor, so as to have proof that it actually did happen. Just having the fragment itself was odd, considering the practice had died out with the depression.

But, come to think of it, perhaps it wasn't as odd as it seemed. Rin was born to a poor gypsy woman, one of those sort who believed wholeheartedly in any superstition or legend. Rin had probably grown up believing, as did so many unlearned folks, that the deletion years were just around the corner, that they hadn't really been done away with. Rin might have created the fragment for the very purpose for which it was created; to preserve a bit of herself should she suddenly get "deleted."

The monorail slowed and came to a smooth stop, the last stop of the line: the eastern end of the government sector. I left with a pack of other people, all of whom rushed away immediately to do their business. No one noticed as I approached the heavy chain-link fence that seperated the reactor site from the rest of the city.

A chain-link fence seems like a poor defense for the government's biggest secret, but it was only the first of many barriers, and you'd be surprised how much psychological influence a simple fence has on the normal person.

I paused for a minute, standing near the fence, and played the recording again.

_The second hand on the clock  
and the officials on the TV  
are still there, but the laughter of someone I can't see  
is echoing all through my head._

_Allegro Agitato  
My ears won't stop ringing  
Allegro Agitato  
My ears won't stop ringing_

Strangely enough, after shutting it off, I could hear laughter. I could hear someone laughing...from the reactor site. When I peered inside, it turned out to be just a guard, laughing at a joke his fellow said, but still, it was eerie. There was something inside that reactor. I could feel it. Whether it was Rin or not, I couldn't tell, but something called me.

The wind was biting, and so I pulled my coat collar up close to my ears and showed my ID to the sensor at the gate, which toodled and permitted me access.

There was a long road, lining a beach which marked the edge of the Great Ocean. I hesitated again, staring out at the beautiful waves. That gave the guards enough time to begin to question my presence.

"Hatsune-sama," one said as he approached. "Why are you here?"

I blinked. "You know I'm no -sama. I'm here on orders. I've taken the case of Kagamine Rin."

"That girl who disappeared?" the man confirmed. "There was hell raised in my neighborhood when they found out she had gone. People think the deleting's going to start again."

"Oh yes, I forgot. You live near her, don't you, Shion-san?" Without waiting for an answer, I reassured, "Well, we all know the government saw to the deleting. It won't happen again. Seemed to be a bug in the system that some super-genius figured out."

The man nodded. "Yes, well, you know I can't let you through..."

"Shion-san, I'm a government employee on a case. It's my job to find out what happened to that girl, and I think she came here."

"But how? This site is guarded constantly!"

"I don't know how, but she did. Let me through."

He put a hand out to block my progress. "Hatsune-san, no one knows what's in there. Even we guards don't know. You could disappear like she did and never come out."

"That's a chance I'll take. Let me through." I pushed him aside and strode quickly down the path before someone else could stop me. I know it was rude, but I was on a case, and besides which, I was incessantly curious about what lay inside the reactor. Here was a perfectly legitimate excuse to get inside and explore.

I keyed and ID'ed my way into the other walls surrounding the place, each growing thicker and more impressive, until the final one seemed like a giant hallway half a mile long, with the sky for a ceiling. As soon as I had stepped inside the doorway to this hall-wall, it shut and locked behind me. The slight _click-beep_ of the lock engaging did nothing to reassure me. Should there be something dangerous in here, there was no guarantee I would be able to get away to safety.

Oh well, I was there already. Nothing to do but start walking. So I did.

My steps were slow, cautious, trembling. Something about this hallway creeped me out, and it wasn't just the fact that I couldn't see the end of it (which, in all reasonable argument, I _should_ have been able to). It might have been the total and complete lack of sound, or the dimming of the light as the sun approached its westward arc down to the horizon, or the lack of decoration, or the intense feeling of being watched by a thousand pairs of eyes, or the way my feet made no sound on the ground, or the way someone else's footsteps were heard clearly far ahead of me.

I froze. "Who's there?"

The only answer I received was a faint giggle, so softly I had to strain to hear it even in the deathly silence of the hallway. It was no guard this time. It sounded almost...like a little girl.

"Hello?"

Nothing. I shook my head roughly, trying to clear my head of its paranoia, and continued walking.

I was about halfway down the hallway (by my reckoning, I still don't know how long it was) when the whole world shifted.

I don't mean in the way the world shifts during an earthquake, where you can see and feel and hear the earth moving below your feet, when you are thrown to the ground often from the forcefulness of the quake. I mean like the way the world shifts when you enter a doorway: one minute you're outside the destination, the next you're inside. My previous step had been in the hallway of the reactor site, and when my foot landed for the next step, I was inside what looked to be a great labyrinthine laboratory. I turned around, but the hallway had disappeared, just as the outside world disappears after you've shut the door.

I stopped moving and simply looked at the room into which I had arrived. This must be some magic of the reactor site, switching sites instantaneously like that. I wondered what Rin had thought as she walked through here and found herself standing here.

A chill ran up my spine and made me shiver. I reached for my coat sleeves, to draw them close to my arms, and found my coat had disappeared altogether. I looked down at myself and realized that in changing scenery, I had also changed outfits. Before, I had been wearing simple black work pants and a black top stamped with the government's seal, underneath a silver windbreaker coat. Now, I was dressed in a black-and-white dress suggesting an archaic school uniform, tie included, and thigh-high black boots trimmed in green. For those who do not believe me, I have included the dress in an evidence bag, to be placed with these files.

Well, if nothing else, the clothes matched the room, so I looked as if I belonged here. The laboratory itself was devoid of people, but filled with beeping and flashing light, buttons, equipment and screens, most of which showing a countdown timer. There was still thirty minutes left, for what I didn't know. The timer made me uneasy, put a strain on my search. I felt like if I wasn't out in those thirty minutes, something terrible would happen to me.

As further proof of my paranoia, I synched my watch to the countdown timer.

There were three paths leading out of the room, on leading East, one North, and one West. I took the East path and hoped that nothing scary would jump out and consume me. The feeling of being watched remained, as did the laughter that followed me out of the room and spurred on my search for Rin.


	3. Taking the Dive

Author's Note: Hello! I've written another chapter just for you!

I'm unsure whether the next one will be the last or if it goes on to a fifth chapter. Guess you'll have to find out!

Obviously, a lot of the scenery and things are my own invention. Don't be yelling at me for not following the songs to the letter.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Three  
Taking the Dive**

As soon as I was out of sight of the laboratory room, things began happening to the Eastward-pointing path. It was becoming green. Plants were gradually becoming more and more prevalent, but they weren't in pots; rather, they were growing out of the walls, as if they were nothing but dirt. There was grass beneath my feet, flowers in the corners between the walls and the floor, and all manner of plants growing out of the walls and the ceiling, growing so thick that eventually they tangled with my ponytails and the way forward became nothing but a small circle in a wall of foliage. My progress was halted. I turned back.

The plants grew around me and formed a solid wall, blocking my path back to the laboratory. Words spun themselves into my thoughts. _You have chosen._

"I can't go forward!" I shouted at nothing. "I can't get through!"

As if in response, the plants opened up a wall, revealing a hallway heading North. Gratefully, I ran down it, reflecting on the already apparent strangeness of this site. No wonder no one ventured in here.

The Northward path was empty for far longer than the Eastward one was, but soon, it too began to gradually morph into something else. This something, however, was much more pleasant—or at least, far less entangling. It became more digital in appearance, including glowing data lines which grew more numerous as I walked along. The walls got brighter and brighter white seamlessly, so that one could not tell the point where it changed from one shade to the next. I judged I was nearing the end of the path when the green data lines were so many that the walls and ceiling and even floor resembled a mass of pulsating data spiderwebs. But still the path went on, and so I did too.

I heard the laughter again, growing louder and louder. It was eerie, but I was still insanely curious about it. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and I wanted to know who it was.

At this point, while exploring the catacombs of what could only be termed the reactor site, I'm afraid I must admit that all thoughts of Rin had been driven out of my head. I was too preoccupied with exploring what no one else had dared discover, with learning what no one else had dared learn.

I wandered the long Northbound hallway, and I was no longer a government employee, but a simple girl, exploring and being explored. It seemed at that moment that the reactor was something living, some entity created but not controlled, and was as curious about me as I was about it. I smiled at this childish thought, and continued...but only for a few steps.

For in those few steps, the world shifted again, and I found myself looking down the largest pit I had ever seen...down to the _real_ reactor. The actual nuclear reactor that the site had been built around.

In that exact moment, I realized just what exactly I had got myself into.

The reactor pit was metal and glass and hundreds of feet wide and some unimaginable length deep. It was blue and green and silver and gold and both shiny and matte. It was a whole slew of contradictions, both unbelievable but so unbelievable there was no choice _but_ to believe. The large pit-like tube stretched down so far I could not see the end, though this was actually scientifically acceptable.

I think at one point I fell to all fours and crawled to the very edge of the pit and just stared down into it, trying to make my mind believe what my eyes saw, because when I heard a real voice call out, I shot up immediately, cautious and guarded once more.

"Who's there?" I cried, and for once, something answered me.

"I _said_, if you want to find her, you'll have to jump."

I started and turned around. "What?"

The voice came from a little girl, just as I had thought. But it wasn't just _any_ little girl. She was dressed in a white dress looking almost like a nurse's uniform, and simple white shoes. Green hair was tied into twin ponytails ringed by odd square hairpieces. Her eyes were wise, but her face wary.

She was a younger me. She _was_ me. The past had come to life in this room, and it had taken the form of eight-year-old me. The voice that giggled...it had been familiar because I _had_ heard it before...years ago, when I had created the sound myself. Revelations spun around my head, making me dizzy with the lack of logic in this site.

Little Miku held out a hand. "Come with me."

"What? But you said..."

"I know what I said, but if you go in there now, you'll disappear like she did."

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"You have to wait before you jump. Come with me to my room. I can give you information that will keep you safe during meltdown."

I followed her; what else could I do? She was _me_. To disobey her...well, it would be like disobeying myself, and that just doesn't make sense.

I followed her down a very short hallway and into a room that defied all physical laws possible. The walls and ceiling seemed to shift position at will, yet the size of the room never changed. The patterns on the walls, ceiling, and floor also appeared to change at irregular intervals, even to the point it looked as if we were just standing in midair, surrounded by sky and clouds. The patterns were so lifelike and real, I almost had no doubt we were shifting places just like the other places in the site.

"Sit," Little Miku commanded.

There was no furniture. I sat on the floor. Little Miku took a few more steps and sank to her knees, her hands coming up and calling up two hologram screens that floated before her, one blank and the other showing the countdown clock.

"How did you come here?" Little Miku asked, her eyes on the blank screen.

I opened my mouth to respond, but she shushed me. "Never mind, I'll find out in a minute."

She tapped the blank screen with a tiny finger and it lit up, showing my entrance into the reactor site and my journey to the reactor pit. Nodding wisely, she said, "You may have a chance."

"What do you mean?"

Finally she looked at me. "You chose the East path, the path of growth, of new beginnings. That is why you found the foliage growing thicker and thicker. However, rather than commit yourself to a lifetime of slow growth, when you became entangled, you tried to escape, to leave. Thus, the North path was opened to you: the path of journeys, of quests, of searches."

I nodded, showing I understood. She continued, "Because of your initial decision, if you time your jump just right, you will _not_ disappear, but instead you will be restored to the outside world. At that point, I think I may cease to exist."

"What? But why?"

Little Miku smiled sadly. "Because I am your past. If you are restored, you will be restored a new person, and you will have released your past. I will be free of this place as you will be."

"What _is _this place?"

"It is the culmination of every internal journey, of every search inside the heart. Those seeking to understand who they are come here. They meet themselves here. What happens after that depends on one's initial decision."

I blinked again, trying to see what she was saying. "So what happens to me inside the reactor depends on my choice of path?"

"You don't have to go into the reactor."

"But...Rin..."

Little Miku's voice grew matter-of-fact. "You've gotten this far. You have it from me that she jumped inside the reactor. That's enough to satisfy your government. It is _your_ choice whether you jump now. It's _your_ journey."

I contemplated this for a moment while she looked over the screens. "Are you sure she disappeared?"

Little Miku shrugged. "She never came back."

"She might still be in there. Finding herself. Or finding her solitude."

Again, the girl shrugged. "She might."

"I want to find her."

"Do you?"

I bit my lip. "Yes. I want to find her. Not because of my case. Because..." I paused. "I feel like I know her. I don't know why. I just feel this kinship with her."

"Are you going to apologize to her?"

I hesitated. "Wh-What?"

"Are you going to apologize to her?"

"For what?"

Little Miku smiled shrewdly. "Well, you know her, don't you?"

"Not really..." I bit my lip again. "I didn't even know her name until I received the case."

_And she said to me, "Where is your reactor?"_

"You could have known her, though."

"Yeah."

"But you didn't take the time."

"I thought she was nuts, and I was late for work as it was..."

"Would it have been worth it?"

Considering this, I fell silent for a whole moment while Little Miku watched the screens again. "It would have."

"So are you going to apologize?"

"...Yeah. I want to tell her I'm sorry I didn't take the time."

"She'll like that."

"I hope so."

"Think you'll find her?"

"Yes."

Little Miku smiled again. "Check your watch."

I did. The countdown clock was still running, but... It was still showing that I had thirty minutes left. "What...?"

"You've taken no time by coming here. You've got thirty minutes to find her. At the end of those thirty minutes, I expect you'll be restored."

"No matter where I am?"

"No matter where you are." Little Miku stood, waving the screens away. "Come on. I'll take you back."

"I can find my way."

She shook her head, twin ponytails bobbing. "No, you can't. You're an outsider. The reactor is subject to change around just to spite you. If I don't take you, you may be lost here forever."

"And you?"

"It listens to me." With that, she led me back out to the reactor pit. I stopped at the very edge, gazing down into its depths.

Little Miku gestured. "You have thirty minutes."

I dived into the reactor, letting gravity take me to its core.


	4. Finding the Girl

Author's Note: So, I have officially decided that the story ends here. Thank you all for sharing my little itty-bitty journey.

Oh, by the way... OMFG SO MANY FAVORITES/REVIEWS IN ONE DAY. I've never had that many for one story in a single day, and it wasn't even a full twelve hours after I posted the last chapter! Thank you all so much! Enjoy the final chapter!

* * *

**Chapter Four  
Finding the Girl**________________________

_She said to me, "Where is your reactor?"_

The second my feet left the floor of the reactor site and my body entered the actual nuclear reactor, my sense of logic dissolved. No matter what happened now, I knew I would find her. The entire world could digest and regurgitate itself and I would not be fazed. My Fate was set.

I flew.

Actually, I fell, but I fell so gracefully down that reactor that I felt like I had become extremely streamlined and just floated down to where I needed to go.

Something sparkled around me, but I didn't spare it a glance until I felt my body shifting; like a cat, I was turning around to land on my feet. The sparkling was the reactor tube changing, morphing into the room into which I was arriving. My feet tapped lightly on the ground, and as my hair fell down around my body, I looked at the room.

It wasn't a room so much as a long hallway (the whole site is nothing but hallways, right?) shining golden with the light of a dying sun. The windows were wide and ancient, but they were blank, it seemed there was nothing outside, or else the sun was shining directly on them so that I couldn't see anything outside.

"Hello?" I whispered, taking a few steps forward. Like out of a dream, I heard a song floating up out of nowhere; the source seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. I stopped and listened...

____________________

_...and I can't sleep  
Everything is changing so fast_

_The lighter's out of oil  
The pit of my stomach's on fire  
If everything is such a lie  
Then it really would be better_

_I dreamed of wrapping my hands around your neck  
on an early afternoon overflowing with light  
I dreamed, with eyes full of tears,  
of cinching your narrow throat_

_I want to dive into a nuclear reactor  
surrounded by beautiful blue light  
If I dive into the nuclear reactor  
then I can let it all go..._

Rin's song. It was Rin's song I was hearing. It played on an endless loop, gradually fading in and out. It didn't sound like anyone was physically singing it...perhaps it was merely springing into being from the depths of her soul itself.

At that moment I happened to glance at my watch and almost gasped with surprise; ten of my precious thirty minutes had already passed. The fall down the tube had taken longer than I thought, and then I'd dawdled...

I had to find her. I walked on, at a slightly faster pace than normal.

I walked for five more minutes down that dusty, sunlit corridor before I heard something other than the pressuring silence. I heard footsteps, but not in the same room, as if someone were following me. I heard them as if through a thin wall. But there were no doors in this hallway, that I could see, and therefore it was impossible for that person to be so close.

Slowly, I approached the wall and leaned my ear against it. The footsteps had stopped. I raised my knuckles...

The exact second I knocked on the wall, someone else did the same thing...right on the spot of wall my ear was on. The sound was excruciatingly loud. I shrieked at the same time the other person did, and jumped back.

"What the hell was that for?" I shouted at the wall.

"I could ask you the same thing!"

"You just tried to knock out my eardrums!"

"At the same time you tried to bust mine!"

I glared at the wall, even if I knew the girl on the other side—and I knew it was a girl—couldn't see me. "How come you aren't over here?"

"Why aren't you over _____________here_?"

"This is where the reactor put me."

"Well, this is where the reactor put _me_. And I'm still looking for that brat."

"What brat?"

"The one I'm trying to strangle."

I blinked. "Why?"

"Because she taunts me."

"Isn't she you?"

There was a pause. "...What?"

"I said, isn't she you?"

"Does it matter?"

"If you strangle her, won't you kill yourself?"

The other girl thought about this. "It doesn't matter anyway. No one cares about me. The world would be better without me. I just take up space. No one's even been to look for me yet."

"How do you know?"

"Because I haven't seen them yet."

"Maybe it's because the reactor won't let you."

There was a long pause, and I almost thought she'd been taken from me. Then she said to me, "Where is your reactor?"

Finally, finally I could answer her. "In my heart."

The pause that followed was the longest yet. I glanced at my watch and realized I only had four minutes left. But Rin had something else to say to me. "Who are you?"

"My name is Hatsune Miku. I met you two days ago."

"I remember."

"I wanted to apologize for not taking the time to talk to you more. You're interesting, and I blew you off."

"I was on my way here by then. It wouldn't have mattered."

"Wouldn't've it?" I said. I put my hand against the wall. "I think about that a lot. What my life would be if I hadn't made the choices I did. If I'd gone down the other path. The people around me...would their lives be different? Would the world still be the same way if I was a different person?"

"One person doesn't matter to the world."

My forehead joined my hand, against the cool surface of the wall. "How do you know? We don't have a god's view of this world. For all we know, our meager lives...we could have such an effect on worldly matters, even if we don't know it."

Rin was silent. I looked at my watch. Two minutes.

"You have a point."

"Will you look to defy your Fate now?"

A single-second pause. "You read my notes."

"I took your case. I read your notes to figure out where you were."

Watch. One minute. Rin said, "The girl came back."

"Did she?"

"I think she's here to take me to it."

"To where?"

Thirty seconds. "Miku-san, I think I know where my reactor is."

"...Where?"

"It's in my future."

As soon as she finished that sentence, I looked down the hall, and there she was, a ghostly echo of herself, dressed in a black-and-white dress similar to mine, holding the hand of her past self, who was wearing a flowing white dress. They were far away, down towards the end of the hall. I smiled, and felt a single tear slide down my cheek.

"Good luck, Rin-san."

My watch showed 00:00:00. The entire hallway grew brighter and brighter, and Rin's scream of triumphant defiance rang in my ears as the hall faded to white and I was lifted high into the air...

The next thing I knew, I was outside the reactor site, and the thing was blowing up. The materials that made up the hallways were melting, and explosions were heard almost continuously. The reactor was dying. It had finished its purpose. I leaned against the chain-link fence, the first of the reactor core's many barriers.

I had been restored, just as Little Miku had predicted. I had also found Rin and apologized, just as I had promised. I wondered for a moment what happened to Shion and the other reactor guards, but in my heart I knew they were safe.

I felt different for my experiences, buy not as different as I thought I would be. When my past self had said I would be a different person, I assumed she meant drastically different. But even in the end, it was the simple, subtle things that mattered in life. I had learned that. Perhaps that was all the change I required.

It started to rain, a cleansing rain to douse the fire of the reactor and wash it away. I reached into my coat pockets and my right hand touched something small. Two somethings small.

I pulled out the note first. It was written in my hand.

____________

_Thought you might like to have this. Good luck with your case._

I pulled out the other object, and my tears mingled with the cold, cold rain.

It was a little toy model of an ancient roadroller, with Rin's name etched on the side.

________

_11 October 20XX.  
I succeeded in finding her fragment._


End file.
